Archive: Posts about Vancouver
June 17th, 2010, 8 Comments »
Last year, I was chatting with somebody from BC Ferries, and I asked why they didn’t offer internet access on their ships. I figured the service represented a big, luscious money tree for them.
Consider this math: you convince just 30 passengers per sailing to pay an average of $8 (maybe it’s regularly priced at $10, but there are subscription plans to reduce the price). That’s $240 per sailing. There are about 20 sailings a day on the Tsawwassen-Swartz Bay route. That’s $2400 a day. Adjusting for fewer sailings in winter, that’s maybe $750,000 a year, per route.
How much does such a system cost to put in place? Surely not more than $750,000. So that’s easy money–at least $1.5 million a year in new revenue for the two major routes–after the first year.
Here’s another way to look at the math. The ferry system carries 21 million passengers a year. If they can sell wifi access to just 0.05% of those people at $10 a head, they make more than $1 million in revenue a year. That’s back of the envelope math, but I’m intentionally low-balling the numbers.
I was pitching this math to my BC Ferries friend, and they readily admitted (and unintentionally punned), “yeah, we missed the boat on that entirely”.
When we lived in Victoria and traveled to Vancouver nearly every other week, I’d have spent a small fortune on wireless internet access. That is until the iPhone’s tethering feature became available. It was truly a game-changer for my commuting time.
And it’s made BC Ferries’ announcement of free wi-fi on ferries more or less redundant. I’ll have to test drive the speed of their free service later in the summer. What are the odds that it’ll be much faster than tethering with my iPhone?
Manis and Pedis Ain’t Free
I was actually more interested to learn about the new premium services that BC Ferries is offering. I’d missed the announcement of these back in April:
Wireless Internet is the latest in a series of up-scale service announcements for the ferry corporation, which has already created a new travel wing  B.C. Ferries Vacations  as well as in-ship spa service, offering pedicures, manicures and massages. The spa service has been “really well-received by our customers†and will continue on limited runs, Thursday through Monday, on the Swartz Bay-Tsawwassen route, said Marshall.
A manicure is $30, and a pedicure is $40, but they’re offering wi-fi for free? That’s also a little puzzling. I could see lots of business customers paying (and expensing) the wi-fi.
The cynical traveler might speculate that they’re offering it for free so that they don’t have to guarantee quality of service. Who can complain if they lose a service that they’ve been receiving for free.
Which would you rather pay for on the ferry: wifi or a mani-pedi?
8 Comments »
June 7th, 2010, 6 Comments »
We’ve had some odd weather recently. The camera happened to be near our balcony, and so I snapped these two photos–one of a torrential downpour, and the other of a sunbeam breaking through over the Burrard St. Bridge–last week. Click to embiggen:
6 Comments »
April 25th, 2010, 6 Comments »
Last summer I wrote about Carrotmob, a clever approach to motivating businesses to become more environmentally responsible by offering them cold, hard cash. Here’s their own description of what they do:
Carrotmob is a method of activism that leverages consumer power to make the most socially-responsible business practices also the most profitable choices. Businesses compete with one another to see who can do the most good, and then a big mob of consumers buys products in order to reward whichever business made the strongest commitment to improve the world. It’s the opposite of a boycott
Today I was invited to a local Carrotmob (also on the Facebook), happening Sunday, May 16 at the Salt Spring Coffee at 4295 Main Street. From the invitation:
All you have to do, the ONLY thing, is to come down to Salt Spring Coffee on Sunday MAY 16th and purchase something – probably a coffee would be a good idea. EVERY SINGLE DOLLAR + 10% Salt Spring Coffee makes that Sunday, will be put towards improving the energy efficiency of that shop!
No more complaining about donations getting lost in third party transactions! It will ALL be used directly by Salt Spring Coffee to make improvements to their business. Our friends at Small Feet Inc. are on board as Sustainability Partners in case they (or you) have any questions on how they can reach their goal of optimizing their energy efficiency.
I’ll definitely drop by and buy something. It’s interesting that the organizers chose Salt Spring Coffee as their vendor for this Carrotmob, the first one in Vancouver. I think of Salt Spring Coffee as a pretty progressive organization already (after all, their paper cup laid a guilt trip on me last winter). I’m sure they could be more environmentally responsible, but I expect that they’re probably ahead of the curve.
The point, as I understand it, is to highlight to Salt Spring Coffee’s competition that consumers care about the environmental footprint of the products and service they use. So that maybe next year we’ll have a Carrotmob at a local Starbucks instead?
If you wanted, you could attend both a Carrotmob and a Boobquake over the next two weeks.
6 Comments »
April 25th, 2010, 1 Comment »
From a little sign at the aptly-named Smart Mouth Cafe in Gastown. A rare insight into the magic of Twitter.
Yes, I’m as troubled by the title case error as you are.
1 Comment »
March 24th, 2010, 2 Comments »
Note to Loyal Readers: I’m aware that this is the fourth theatre review I’ve posted in the last three weeks. Never fear, that should be enough for a while.
Last week I was invited to the opening of “Paradise Garden”, the premier production by Arts Club Theatre Company of Lucia Frangione’s (yet another Canadian playwright who deserves a Wikipedia entry) new play.
Set “off the coast of the Gulf Islands” (an in-exact phrase if there ever was one), “Paradise Garden” tells a story of star-cross love between Day, played by Kevin McDonald, a slacker Islander who’s inherited the rambling family estate, and Layla, the daughter of Turkish parents who’s renting on Day’s property. Layla, played by Frangione, ministers to her dying mother and clashes with her stubborn, traditional father. On the other side of the hedge, Day struggles to find his way in the world among the wreckage of his parents’ divorce–she’s a fake-breasted cougar and he’s a curmudgeonly pot farmer. Both characters suffer from a delayed childhood–they’re still under their parents’ wings, despite being in their late 20s when the play opens.
Listening to Frangione’s text, I remember that I’d seen another of her plays, “Espresso”, a few years back at Pacific Theatre. Both plays are rich with lush imagery, as evocative as her name. She’s got a knack for rapidly leading us from the mundane to the visceral without forcing the transitions. “Paradise Garden” is wordy, but in a light, spoon-fed kind of way that’s totally forgivable.
I was less forgiving of a device in which the lead characters spoke of themselves in the third person. There didn’t seem to be a rationale for this trope–neither character was particularly alienated from their true selves–so it just felt forced. I could have also done without Adam and Eve metaphors (maybe that’s more in the staging than the script?), and some criticisms of Canadian culture felt tired.
Capillaries or Seaweed?
The cast was strong, though the female actors felt more fully realized, more comfortable in their skin. McDonald, in particular, took a long time to find his feet. He’s got a lot to balance in maintaining Day’s laissez-faire outlook while still seeming appealing enough to overachieving Layla’s. Frangione gives Day an unexpected educational upgrade in the second act, probably to satisfy this requirement.
Photo by Ross Den Otter
Morris Ertman and Ted Roberts seemed to struggle in realizing Frangione’s vision of the setting. She provides tons of on-stage business and textual indications about the setting, but Roberts’ set seemed to be more a compromise than a bold statement. I either wanted less set, and we rely on Frangione’s words, or a totally realistic set. In any case, the actual set featured a kind of over-sized blue capillary system above a pool and archway. We spend 120 minute wondering why it’s there, and the payoff doesn’t quite feel worth the effort.
I sound like I’m down on the production, but I’d recommend “Paradise Garden” to somebody looking for an inoffensive but pleasing night at the theatre. It runs through April 11 at the Stanley Theatre. There’s some nudity, mostly of the male variety.
2 Comments »
March 22nd, 2010, 4 Comments »
I’m only a casual baseball fan. I know what a squeeze play is, how to throw a split-finger fastball and what it means to hit to the opposite field. Hardcore fans, of course, can recite Cecil Fielder’s career ERA off the top of their head, and can judge how their favourite player will hit by the way his knees bend in the batter’s box.
If you take a baseball fan to a cricket match, they’ll get the general idea. They can understand how runs are scored, and players put out. But they’ll miss the layers of nuance and detail that they customarily recognize at the baseball diamond.
So it is with me and opera. I feel confident in my ability to review theatre, and even musicals, but opera is my cricket. In particular, I’m unfamiliar with the theatrical traditions of opera, and unable to evaluate the competency of the singing, a huge component of the experience. Nevertheless, onward.
Nixon Goes to China
About a week and a half ago, I was invited to the opening of “Nixon in China”, the latest production from Vancouver Opera. I wouldn’t normally jump at the chance to see opera, but I understood this to be one of the most important operas of the 20th century. Plus, I’ve never seen a modern opera before–this one premiered in 1987.
And it’s a big deal for Vancouver Opera. This is the Canadian debut for “Nixon in China”, and the production budget was the most they’d ever spent on a show–$1.4 million.
The opera tells the story of President Nixon’s visit to China in 1972. Just as many historical operas are populated with kings, queens, lords and ladies, so this one’s case includes Nixon and his wife, Chairman Mao and his wife, Chinese Premier Choi En-lai and Henry Kissinger.
The show is big. There’s the huge cast, with about 50 performers and a similarly large orchestra. The sets were sparse and iconic–oversized images of flags or the characters and stark red lines. The set design decisions all seemed a little obvious, and they neither served or detracted from the piece.
It’s big in duration, too. –three hours long, with two intermissions. There’s even a (murkily lit) ballet that interrupts the second act.
The libretto is a three-hour prose poem, concerned more with evocative images than with plot or storyline. That’s no surprise, as it’s written by poet Alice Goodman. John Adams’s music is rich and dense, drawing from sources as diverse as Wagner, Gershwin and contemporary film scores.
This seems to be the crux of where modern opera and musical theatre diverges. Opera sacrifices narrative cohesion and complex plots for sonic complexity and the freedom to be more abstract.
“I Came Here For Fun”
So what did I think? I’ve been thinking about the opera for the last week and a half–that’s why this review is so late. I’ve been probing my memory of the performance for some contemporary relevance. I can see how, in the dying days of the Cold War, “Nixon in China” might resonate. But how does it speak to me today?
I searched, but I couldn’t find much meaning. I enjoy abstract art, but only when I can extract some concrete messages or ideas from it. Ten days later, what can I take from “Nixon in China”? Maybe something along the lines of “sometimes cultural gaps are too broad, and can’t be bridged”? I left unsatisfied.
And I wasn’t alone. I overheard some season ticket holders sitting next to me, and one said to the other, “I have to keep reminding myself that I came here for fun”.
Then I think about this opera’s price tag: $1.4 million for four performances? Surely that’s at least three times the budget of a play at the Arts Club or Playhouse–a lot of money to spend on four nights of inaccessible art. Imagine distributing that money among twenty innovative theatre companies. At $50,000 a piece, you’d end up with some pretty awesome art.
Knowing it’s towering position in opera history, I really wanted to like and be moved by “Nixon in China”. Instead, it left me cold and weary. I rarely leave a theatre performance thinking, simply, “man, I didn’t get it”. Maybe I ought to just stick to baseball?
4 Comments »
March 19th, 2010, 3 Comments »
Last night I was at a client event, and some developers were demonstrating applications they’d built on top of the City of Vancouver’s Open Data catalogue.
The app I really liked is called VanPark 2010, and overlays metered parking rates on top of a map of downtown Vancouver.
Lots of geeks abstractly advocate the power of open source and open data, but this seems to be a great example of how opening up data can help the average citizen. I requested a feature where the user enters an address, and the app highlights the cheapest parking within, say, 500 meters.
And can we take a moment to recognize the awesomeness of Bing Maps’ Birds eye view functionality. It truly is the eye of God.
3 Comments »
March 14th, 2010, 3 Comments »
On Friday night I was invited to HIVE 3, a site-specific installation of 12 short, concurrent performances out at the Great Northern Way campus. HIVE 3 is a collaborative project of over a dozen local theatre companies. I think of them as ‘second-generation companies’. Not as old or established as the Arts Club or the Vancouver Playhouse, but some (like Pi Theatre or Theatre Skam) have been around for at least fifteen years.
Each show occurs in a walled-off corner of the space, though a couple actually happened in shipping containers outside. The performances ran 10 to 20 minutes in length. For some shows you simply queued up, but plenty of others had hoops you needed to jump through to gain admission. You might have to get a token from a previous attendee, or secure a ‘VIP invitation’ from a bouncer with a clipboard. The Electric Company performed for one audience member at a time, and they ran a lottery to choose the lucky winner. I didn’t see it, but the company’s GM assured me they’d post video of the show on their website after HIVE 3 closes.
UPDATE: Here’s the Electric Company’s show.
My friend called the evening “the Fringe on acid”, and that’s a pretty apt description. I saw six shows over two-and-a-half hours, and they varied in quality and tone the same way any six Fringe shows might.
My favourite was probably Boca Del Lupo’s “The Interview”, which used clever projections and a treadmill to tell the story of an embedded reporter in Afghanistan. I assume it was fiction, as it featured a plot point very similar to the 1949 Mann Gulch Fire (retold in this nice folk song). I also liked Pi Theatre’s “House/Home”, which was kind of a burlesque pop-up book of a playlet (that’s their show in the photo below). November Theatre’s “Ana” was a carefully-crafted little nugget which seemed just right for the evening’s constraints of time and space.
Others were less successful. Nearly all the shows suffered from a lack of reach. Many companies were experimenting with form–more on this in a minute–but few aspired to genuinely take on a meaningful theme or move the audience. Maybe the evening’s format discourages weightier topics?
On the whole, I applaud this approach. It’s probably the first time in my life when I’ve attended a theatre show and been (just barely, admittedly) on the old side of the audience. Most of the audience still had their own hair, and it wasn’t grey. In a world where the big theatres regularly target senior citizens, that fact alone is pretty exciting.
It’s also a great opportunity to take the temperature of what theatre artists are thinking about these days. One trend I observed was how so many of the shows were concerned with or were mediated through technology. The aforementioned “Ana” includes a long (if familiar to me) riff on analog vs. digital. “House/Home” was performed using microphones and all the audience members wore headphones (this was also intended to manage the noise bleeding between shows). Theatre Replacement’s “S.P.A.M.” had some clever schtick involving the audience’s cell phones, though they could have constructed a more intriguing story or framework for the interactions.
I had a chat with one of the organizers about how HIVE amortizes risk for the performers. The audience member pays one price ($25 for adults, $20 for students and seniors) to get in, so the pressure is off any one particular company to sell tickets. They can take chances and experiment, and don’t have to be utterly concerned with the bottom line.
Likewise, the twelve companies can pool marketing resources. The capacity for each night is only 200, and HIVE 3 runs for eight nights through March 20. Surely the combined email lists, Facebook pages and Twitter accounts of the 12 companies are more than enough to scare up 1600 attendees.
You’re not going to be moved to tears by anything you see at HIVE 3, but if you’re up for a concentrated shot of theatrical creativity, check it out.
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